What kind of restaurants and food you can find in Japan?
This blog is for "Food Lovers" who are planning to travel in Japan, who are non-Japanese speakers living in Japan and all who are interested in food culture of Japan!
英語で日本の食文化を紹介するブログです。

6 posts from March 2013

31 March 2013

Following the last two posts featuring food related topics at Tokyo Disneyland, first about Restaurant Hokusai and the second post, souvenir of Japan available at Tokyo Disneyland, this post features an interesting product we found at Tokyo Disneyland.

It is FURIKAKE (ふりかけ), as you may know from our previous post, it is seasoning specialized in Japanese style cooked rice.

This Furikake will be the best to place on rice in your lunch box. It will be fun to prepare and to show it to your friends.

Well, the package is like this.

We found at a souvenir shop in Tokyo Disneyland.

Normally Furikake is sold solely with single or assorted flavors

but this package is not so simple.

Sticks in three different colors of furikake powder and

Mickey face template sheets included.

Let's make a cute lunch box now.

Following the instruction,

a template is placed on a lunch box with cooked rice

and put the yellow (egg flavor) furikake within the space of template.

As the second step, with the second template sheet

two other colors are added one for head, ears, eyes and nose of Mickey Mouse

the one in pink is used only for his smiling mouth.

Then remove the sheet and find Mickey face you drew!!

Blurred !?!?

Never mind!! A pack includes three sets of Mickey Mouse drawing.

So you can try three times and will do it better next time!

The product introduced above, Mickey Mouse furikake, is available at souvenir shops at Tokyo Disneyland.

29 March 2013

Following our last post introducing a nice Japanese restaurant at Tokyo Disneyland, today we show you some products for souvenir of Japan that can be found at Tokyo Disneyland.

The American theme-park offers some cute and unique products exclusively available at Tokyo Disney Resort including two most popular leisure parks in Japan, "Tokyo Disneyland" and "Tokyo Disney Sea".

Firstly don't miss a chance to drop by a shop called Chiba Tradings Arts and Crafts at Tokyo Disneyland.

It is located in Adventureland not far from Jungle Cruise attraction, selling Japan and Chiba prefecture(where the park is situated)'s traditional craft products.

Rice bowl and other pottery wares by local producers WITH Mickey pattern.

If you are interested in...

a few of real arts and crafts are available.

They are decoration for traditional festivals.

Even at other souvenir shops scattered across the park, you will find some clues of Japan, not only products with Disney characters. Here are some examples of food and food related products we found.

Chop sticks

Instant Ramen, the small size ramen can be made in your soup cup

Rice crackers in Mickey shape

Kaki-no-tane (柿の種, traditional spicy rice crackers)

coated with berry or white chocolate

Outer it is sweet but inside it's hot!

The faintly spicy snack is in the cute pink package!!

AND...

This is not strongly associated with Japan though,

one of the most popular souvenir among locals.

Chocolate crunch!! (cookie crashed and coated with chocolate)

We selected strawberry flavor this time.

More and more souvenir of Japan can be found at Tokyo Disney Resort. Not only enjoy riding Big Thunder Mountain roller coaster and watching Disney character shows, also visit some shops in the parks sometimes and find your favourite Mickey & Japan stuff!

On our next post, we will also focus on one of unique Japanese food products got at Tokyo Disneyland!!

21 March 2013

Some of you may plan to visit Tokyo Disneyland while you stay in Tokyo. Even the American theme park exists in your country, it will be interesting to visit the one in Tokyo and to see how they are different across countries.

This will be one of the differences of Tokyo Disneyland from other Disney parks in the world.

A Japanese restaurant is availablein Tokyo Disneyland which will be celebrated for 30th anniversary from 15 April 2013. The restaurant is called "Hokusai" (北斎). Obviously it is named after the most famous block print artist in Edo period, Katsushika Hokusai. The Japanese restaurant has been operated since the park opening. Originally Restaurant Hokusai was designed for Japanese senior generation which were not familiar with Western style food like hamburger in early 1980's. Nowadays Japanese elderly people are also happy to enjoy any kind of Western food with their grandchildren. So the role of the Japanese restaurant has been changed for adding more dining choices in the most popular theme-park in Japan.

Restaurant Hokusai is located in World Bazaar which is the theme park's largest shopping zone close to the entrance gate.

Don't miss the sign board and entrance door on the ground floor.

The restaurant itself is on the upper floor.

On the upper floor, it is decorated in traditional Japanese style with some Japanese arts. The space is quite far from the world of Disney films. We cannot believe that it is in Disneyland!!

The Japanese restaurant offers several different meal sets with each typical Japanese main dishe such as tempura, udon noodle and pork shabushabu (fondue).

A place to have Japanese traditional sweets is called in some different ways such as "Kanmi-dokoro (甘味処, sweets place)", "Saryo (茶寮, tea house)", "Sabo (茶房, tea place)", "Wa Cafe (和カフェ, Japanese style cafe)" etc. Some are very traditional and newers are modern and look like Western style cafe from outside. That might confuse you to know what it is. Anyway the best way will be to look at menu what they provide (many have menu with photos) and to look around space and what other people have. Whatever it is called, if many people are there and look happy with the place and sweets, you will also have a good experience. In central Tokyo, in general, comfortable tea rooms are likely to be busy with ladies on afternoon even on weekday.

Toraya Akasaka flagship store (虎屋 赤坂本店) is also one of our recommendable tea salons to feel fine Japanese atmosphere. Toraya (虎屋) is an established sweets maker born in Kyoto over five hundreds years ago. In the past we posted two articles of units under Toraya chain brand,"Toraya Cafe, Roppongi (トラヤカフェ, 六本木)" and "Breakfast at Toraya Cafe Aoyama." They are newer and modern shops by the traditional sweets house. Now we come back to the original where traditional Japanese sweets are served.

Toraya Akasaka flagship store is located along Aoyama Street. It takes about 5-minute-walk from Akasaka Mitsuke (赤坂見附) station and not far from Hotel New Otani and TBS broadcasting center. As per Toraya's official site, the sweets producer has a factory just next to Akasaka Imperial Palace, in prime location close to the flagship store. Toraya's products have been provided on the Imperial family of Japan even since Edo period, when the family was based in Kyoto.

If you leant Hiragana (Japanese letters), you might wonder the logo expressing as "やらと" (Ya Ra To) opposite of "Toraya (とらや)." It implies the house exists since Edo period when people wrote letters from left to right, not in the modern way as same with Western world right to left. Yes, Toraya has used the logo for hundreds of years.

Toraya boutique is on the ground floor of the flagship store and the tea salon (Toraya Saryo, 虎屋茶寮) is on the underground floor. The building and interior are modern and clean. The tea salon is peacefully calm with graceful guests and staff as if it was on a tea ceremony.

Toraya tea salon offers some set menu including a piece of traditional sweets such as Yokan (羊羹, beans cake) or Nama-gashi (生菓子, fresh cake), the house's major product and green tea.

This is a set of Seasonal Yokan, the most-known Toraya's product

and Matcha (powdered green tea often sereved at a tea ceremony).

Seasonal Yokan at that time, the end of February is

"Kobai (紅梅, red Japanese plum)"

It's a way in which we appreicate the beauty of each season, through food and sweets.

The bowl of Matcha is with pictures of smiley Hina Dolls (ひな人形)

which are symbols of Girls' Festival (Hina-Matsuri, ひな祭り) on 3rd March.

06 March 2013

In some towns in central Tokyo, Akasaka (赤坂) will be a good place for non-Japanese travelers to hang out and freely to pop in a restaurant at own choice on the spot.

But today's our recommendation, Kobe Beef Kaiseki 511 is an exception of such on-site search, even though it is only 5 minutes walk both from Akasaka (赤坂) and Akasaka Misuke(赤坂見附) subway stations. The restaurant specialized in "Kobe beef"(神戸牛), as name shown, is located in quiet area where small office buildings and apartments stand along a narrow street, off from the town's main streets. Only those who already know the restaurant can visit it. It is not a place whichi is filled with tourists or strangers.

So be ready with a map to visit the restaurant. It is also on undergroung floor. Don't miss the sign on one side of the street like this.

After going through the entrance where we found a certificate of high quality beef provider, we recognized that the restaurant is very modern and bright with lighting and narural colors cloths, unlike a traditional steak house.

Buy the way, we wonder why the restaurant name has a specific number 511. Remind you it is not 551, a famous Butaman (pork bun) shop in Osaka. As per the restaurant's official site, 5 represents "A5" which is the highest quality rank of beef and 11 does the value of beef marbling standard. The restaurant proudly serves A5 rank beef with 11 marbling value.

We guess many of you are now curious about what are served at Kobe Beef Kaiseki 511 (神戸牛懐石511).

If it is affordable for you, it will be good to visit the Kobe Beef restaurant on evening. The dinner courses with Kobe beef cost around Yen 10,000 - 13,000.

But the reason we introduce the restaurant is the price for LUNCH.

Not all lunch set menu includes Kobe been though. We can taste the highest quality beef at less than Yen2000 during lunch time.

For example, what we ordered,

Kobe Beef kalvi (rib) box (カルビ重) is Yen1500 per person.

Several pieces of kalvi BBQ style beef are on top of rice.

Served in a box with salad, miso soup and a tiny plate of dessert.

The thin sliced beef is very soft and flavored with a bit sweet BBQ sauce. The volume and quality are much more than sufficient, considering the price we paid.

Great to taste Kobe beef at such reasonable price!!!

The restaurant offers other attractive choices of lunch set, including Kobe beef hamburger steak, Kobe beef steak and Japanese beef(out of Kobe brand) at less expensive price.

02 March 2013

We are proud
to announce that our English blog “About Food in Japan” (http://aboutfoodinjapan.weblogs.jp)
has produced over 300 posts since its launch on February 2008, a few months
after Michelin red guide for Tokyo was published for the first time.

Celebrating
the 5th anniversary, as below, we are pleased to present site access
report for our blog.

＜Basic
Information＞

Period for
reported data: 2nd May 2010
to 1st January 2013 (total 32 months)

We found that
a lot of site users are accessing from Japan. Considering the fact that 71% of
access users are English version users, majority of users from Japan would be non-Japanese
who stay temporary or reside in Japan.

Analyzing
variance in shares between in articles posted and in page views, it seems that
accessed users has high interest in “Sweets” category.

＜Report by
articles posted＞

Here we have
top 5 or 10 ranked articles listed as below.

The rankings
are based on average page view per day (total
page view /number of days since posted) for Restaurants & bar category or total page view during the reporting period for all other categories.

Click the tiles on the list to move to a listed article.

Restaurants
& bars

It is our
policy to select and introduce service providers with high quality, good
service and excellent in cost performance from user’s view point. With such
conditions, we see various types of restaurants ranked, casual or upscale, non-Japanese
etc. In any case, they are top of our recommendation as well.

Apart from Rose
Bakery collaborating with COMME des GARCONS produced by a Japanese designer Ms.
Rei Kawakubo, all ranked are made by international brands. We could not see name
of any Japanese traditional sweet producer or green tea café on higher rank, in
spite of the interesting option to spend time in Japan. One reason of this
result would be, unlike Izakaya, no unique and fixed concept and a word
representing such cozy places. We will consider more opportunities introduce
some Japanese tea salon or café near future.